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May 24, 2011

G48: Red Sox 4, Cleveland 2

Jason Varitek's two-run homer in the seventh gave Beckett (6.2-5-1-3-6, 111) a cushion and helped the Red Sox move into second place in the AL East.

Beckett had only one 1-2-3 inning, but except for the run that scored in the second, he allowed only two Cleveland runners to advance past first base.

In the Boston third, Carl Crawford was hit by a pitch and stole second. After Drew Sutton moved Crawford to third with a ground out, Jacoby Ellsbury walked and stole second. Jed Lowrie's sacrifice fly scored Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez's double scored Ellsbury.

David Ortiz doubled twice and was on base when Varitek hit his first dong since May 30, 2010.

The Yankees scored twice in both the eighth and ninth innings to beat the Blue Jays 5-4 and the Tigers beat the Rays 7-6, so the Red Sox (26-22) moved into second place, 0.5 GB New York (26-21), with Tampa Bay (26-23) 1 GB and Toronto 2.5 GB.

Peter Abraham, Globe:John Lackey threw 40 pitches, all fastballs, in the bullpen today here at Progressive Field. His right elbow felt fine and he is scheduled for a longer bullpen session on Friday in Detroit.From there, Lackey will pitch in a minor-league rehab game on May 31 and is tentatively scheduled to rejoin the Red Sox rotation on June 5 against Oakland at Fenway Park.

It's probably just those 4 of all time, then. Ruth just missed in 1919, and before that there were hardly any 100 RBI guys. I guess 1901/02 Buck Freeman and maybe 1912 Tris Speaker woulda had a shot but I don't think so. Earl Webb was 1 hit away in 1931, and one game was shortened by blue laws--he would have had at least one more AB! Ol' Earl doesn't know how close he was to making that article...

Go to a hitter's page on B-R, go to More Stats, scroll down to Situational Hitting, and you can at least see the # of baserunners the guy had on base, how many scored while he was up, and the percentage.

Jere, right, of course you can figure it out. My point is that the RBI stat is expressed as a counting number, and much is made of it, but it doesn't mean a lot unless you know how many chances the player had - so it should be expressed as a percentage.